Music review: BBC SSO: Hear & Now, City Halls, Glasgow
We were listening, under Ilan Volkov’s no-nonsense direction, to the challenging sound worlds of Filipino composer Jose Montserrat Maceda and the American John Tenney, both of whom lived till just over a decade ago, and whose music seeks, and to my mind generally finds, an expressive language that is fresh and self-fulfilling.
Volkov opened with Maceda’s 1992 orchestral work Distemperament, which, with its harsh, mechanised dissonance, pseudo-minimalist vocabulary, and democratised reconfiguration of the orchestral groups, bore all the hallmarks of an updated factory-style Gebrauchsmusik. Hindemith for the new age.
Advertisement
Hide AdThe remainder of the concert focused entirely on Tenney’s quasi-sculptural creations, where his obsession with altered pitch colouring combines with his interest in electronic techniques to create something akin to live sound installations.
Diapason, powered by an elemental and intense organic growth, threw up unexpected echoes of Sibelius. The floor cleared for double bassist Dominic Lash and the solo work Beast, an hypnotic trip revolving around a single persistent note. Then Clang for orchestra, framed by a signature Stravinsky-like chord, between which the score evolves like a heaving, slow-motion soundtrack. All in all, music that spoke powerfully for itself.